Crafts on Sea

activities for kids

Playdough Smash: Number Recognition Game

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Over the last couple of weeks my daughter has suddenly become really interested in learning numbers, both counting and recognising the numbers written down. It’s made the school and nursery run a bit more interesting because she likes to yell out any numbers she recognises on the back of busses when we’re stuck in traffic! This number recognition game is super simple but there’s a couple of ways I’ll suggest to change it up too so that you could use it with older kids or use it for learning to count.

playdough smash…

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15 Calming Activities For After School

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I know that after school or preschool my kids can still be pretty wired, sometimes we’ll head out to the park but sometimes (especially when it’s cold!) it’s good just to be at home. These calming activities for after school are all tried and tested by mums with their kids, meaning that they are great for helping kids to decompress and most of them would work as great calming activities for toddlers too, perfect if like me you have more than one kid that needs calming down!calming-activities-for-kids

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10 Fun Ways to Visually Stimulate Your Baby

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Babies. Sometimes it feels like they don’t do very much, sometimes it feels like they never stop doing things! The world is an exciting (and sometimes scary) place for babies and as a parent I know that I always wanted to find interesting things for my babies to safely explore. Today I’m sharing some of my favourite ways to visually stimulate your baby along with a really cool tool that helps you see what your baby can see!

ways to visually stimulate your baby

10 Ways to visually stimulate your baby

Bubbles: I have yet to ever meet a child that doesn’t love bubbles

Mobiles: many people buy mobiles for their babies cots but you can also make simple ones yourself and hang things like ribbons, pompoms and feathers from them.

Books: you can never have too many books for your kids! Babies love ones with simple black and white pictures or pictures of other babies faces.

Mirrors: sit your baby in front of a mirror and see how they respond to seeing themselves in it.

Make a colourful sensory bin: Sensory bins can often be full of things like rice or pasta but they don’t need to be, this rainbow themed sensory bin contains loads of bright colours to visually stimulate your baby, takes a minute to set up and is totally safe for them to play with

Make a tag blanket: tag blankets are great for babies to play with, but by making your own following a tutorial like this you can use bold materials that will visually interest your child too.

Play peek-a-boo

Create a sensory bottle: when my youngest was a baby she loved looking at this sensory bottle, just make sure that the lid is safely glued to before giving it to your baby to explore

Make a family book: Put together pictures of people in your family that your baby can play with and look at

Take them to a pet shop with an aquarium: this is such a cheap way to keep babies entertained, mine used to love watching the fish!

visual stimulation for babies fun activities

What can your baby see?

Vision Express have launched a fun new online tool which helps you see what your baby can see. Designed by their leading opticians the baby sight tool shows how normal eye sight develops over the first year.  You can try out the baby site tool here, all you need to do is input your child’s age and the tool will give you some idea of what your baby’s field of vision, depth perception and colour awareness might be like. As you move the slider, you’ll notice colours and objects become sharper. For instance a newborn will see only black and white while a two-month old will see only bright primary shades. I found it really interesting to play with too as there’s such a difference from month to month! What can your baby see right now?

Baby and mobile image and baby on a mat image via Shutterstock

Post in association with Vision Express